Michael Marks pleads guilty to fraud in psychic business

One of nine members of a Broward County family of fortune tellers accused of operating a multimillion-dollar fraud on customers pleaded guilty to a lone criminal charge this week.

Michael Marks, 34, of Hollywood, reached a plea agreement with prosecutors and admitted he participated in a mail and wire fraud conspiracy dating to the early 2000s in Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Marks is the son of Rose Marks, who federal prosecutors say is the matriarch and ringleader of a sophisticated conspiracy. Nine members of the family were arrested in August 2011 on allegations they cheated clients out of an estimated $40 million.

Oh the Marks family. It’s never ending with them. I can hardly keep track of all their impending criminal charges and antics. For more, see here.

In this case, Michael Marks ran a psychic service where the “psychics” told the clients they were cursed and advised them to hand over valuables in order to remove the so-called cursed. You can guess what DIDN’T happen. I did not know this scam was so darn popular but we must have posted a dozen cases about this in the past year. It seems extraordinarily common.

Yes, this scam is EXTREMELY popular, and has been for years. I remember hearing about it over a decade ago (probably longer) from skeptical police detectives I knew. Indeed, the practitioners of this scam often expect to be caught at some point, but sock away a little money to pay the inevitable fine — it’s like a cost of doing business because they make a LOT more than they lose in the fine.